Senator calls on NMSU regents to resign over Carruthers move

ByMilan Simonich, Santa Fe New Mexican | February 14, 2018

The president pro tem of the New Mexico Senate on Wednesday called for the resignation of the five regents of New Mexico State University, saying they had arbitrarily stripped powers from Chancellor Garrey Carruthers.

The regents voted Monday to prohibit Carruthers from hiring and firing people in executive or coaching positions at the main campus in Las Cruces and on NMSU’s branch campuses.

Morales said at least three Republicans from the House of Representatives had added their names to Papen’s letter calling for the regents to resign. They are Reps. Yvette Herrell of Alamogordo, Candy Spence Ezzell of Roswell and James Townsend of Artesia.

Senate Minority Leader Stuart Ingle, R-Portales, was writing a letter of his own criticizing the regents for their treatment of Carruthers.

That letter, which had not yet been made public, did not go so far as to seek the regents’ resignations, said Sen. Steve Neville, R-Aztec.

Neville has been a vocal supporter of Carruthers for years. He said the regents were “a little heavy-handed” in taking away the chancellor’s powers.

Neville spoke out for Carruthers last year when the regents said Carruthers had announced his retirement. Soon after, Carruthers, 78, said he wanted to work as chancellor for another few years.

The regents then voted to search for a new chancellor and said Carruthers would leave office at the end of June, when his five-year term expires.

In debate Wednesday on the Senate floor, several Democratic senators spoke on behalf of Carruthers and against Republican Gov. Susana Martinez’s record on picking regents. No Republican senators spoke during the debate, though Carruthers is a former GOP governor of New Mexico.

Papen’s call for the ouster of the NMSU regents was challenged in certain respects by one Democrat, Sen. Jacob Candelaria of Albuquerque.

Candelaria said the Senate should hold up-or-down votes on nominees for regent seats through its confirmation process. That has not always happened.

He said he was frustrated by the politics on all sides when it comes to seating university regents.

In Martinez’s seven years as governor, the Senate has rejected only one of her nominees for a board or commission. They did not confirm Matt Chandler for a seat on The University of New Mexico Board of Regents.

Martinez later appointed Chandler to a District Court judgeship, a job not subject to Senate confirmation.

In addition to Hicks, members of the New Mexico State University Board of Regents are Kari Mitchell, Mike Cheney, Jerean Camerez Hutchinson and Margie Vela. Vela is a student at NMSU.

Related

Comments

More About

An advocate for an animal rights organization says a state representative should step down because he sexually harassed her. The advocate, Laura Bonar, is the Chief program and policy officer for Animal Protection Voters and Animal Protection of New Mexico according to the organization’s website.

The Libertarian Party of New Mexico filed paperwork to name former governor Gary Johnson as its nominee for U.S. Senate. The Secretary of State updated the listing of candidates to include Johnson Tuesday morning after the party filed at 9:30 on Monday, the office said.

New Mexico school districts that had hoped to put a little more cushion in their budgets managed to persuade a sympathetic Legislature, but couldn’t get it past the governor’s veto pen. When she signed the 2018-2019 budget on March 7, Gov. Susana Martinez struck a line through $5 million state lawmakers had set aside to repay some school districts whose cash accounts had been swept by $40.

As gunshots rang out in Aztec High School one morning last December, a substitute teacher was left to improvise. She did not have a key to lock the door to her classroom, but ushered her students into a neighboring room and barricaded the door with a couch.

Some House and Senate Republicans say that if the New Mexico Supreme Court overturns line-item vetoes by the governor the court would disenfranchise members of the minority caucuses in each chamber. Last month, the New Mexico Legislature filed a lawsuit against Gov. Susana Martinez, accusing her of violating the state constitution when she vetoed the entirety of the budgets for the state Legislature and all higher education in New Mexico.

MCALLEN — Every afternoon, dozens of immigrant families released by the U.S. government walk three blocks from the Greyhound bus station in this South Texas border city to a migrant shelter run by Catholic Charities.

LAS CRUCES, N.M. — Groups advocating for the rights of children and families detained at the southern border are using the Freedom of Information Act to find out exactly where the Trump administration plans to build migrant detention centers on two military bases in the Southwest.